The Handing Over Time

Overnight the temperature toyed with freezing, but never quite crossed the threshold.  If the forecast is to be believed, subsequent nights this week will laugh at that dividing line.  The chicken yard is carpeted with feathers from the molting as the girls prepare for winter.  And so must we.  Yesterday we stored the rain barrels and reconfigured the gutter downspouts.  We replaced the chicken waterers with their heated versions and stretched the extension cords to serve them.  Straw bales are on the way to insulate the coops, and before long I’ll twist the arms of my friends to help trade out the tractor’s mowing deck for the snowblower.  There are hoses to coil and collect.  Of course there is still work to be done in the garden, dismantling the tomato supports and extricating spent plants.  There are plenty of peppers yet to harvest along with greens and leeks and a cabbage and carrot or two.  Days grow shorter while the nights stretch deeper into morning.  It’s time to clean out, clean up and batten down.

 

Winter always catches me by surprise, though its coming can hardly be a mystery.  One minute I’m marveling at the colors and the falling of the leaves and the next I’m organizing snow shovels and ice melt in the garage and flannel shirts in the closet.  There is a wistfulness to the change – to what singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer calls “the handing over time.”  I’m among the few who love winter, snow and all; but I dearly love autumn.  Fall is the only time I make room for the color orange, but on the pumpkins and trees I note its remarkable beauty.  There is a crispness to the season; a clarifying freshness that belies the seasonal decay.  I almost don’t mind the nudging reminder of the passage of time that is, undeniably and inexorably, passing.  My wallet bulging with newly minted Medicare cards, I hardly need additional reminders.  

 

But I love these days, shorter and chillier though they may be, and drawn from a bag that is only getting lighter.  I love the interiority of the hours, the glow of the hearth, the lethargy of the dogs and the softnness of the sweaters.  I love tromping through the thinner woods and scuffing my feet through the leaves.  I love exhaling and seeing my breath, picking up a pinecone, and admiring the blue/gray berries on the cedar; the anticipation of snuggling in while, outside, the elements flex their muscles.  I love the game of gathering an egg before it freezes, and finding tracks in new-fallen snow while doing my aesthetic best not to sully the scene with any of my own.  I love listening deeply into the silence – the hush that increasingly settles on the land.  I love these yet-colorful days with their morning bite and their evening silhouette and their daylight invitation to hurriedly get the last remaining chores completed.

 

And in the briskness, shivering with the joy of being alive.